The Working People’s Alliance (WPA) has said that the Health Minister’s acceptance of personal responsibility for the recent maternal deaths should be followed by his resignation.
Dr. Leslie Ramsammy has accepted the failure of the state’s medical services to provide a sufficiently high standard of patient care in the facilities run by the government, the party said yesterday, and it also called on Minister in the Ministry of Health, Dr Bheri Ramsaran to resign.
“The resignations of the two primary political faces at the Ministry of Health will set desirable standards for others in whose charge rests the lives and livelihood of Guyanese, but who have either underperformed or lack the capacity to function in their appointed portfolios”, the WPA said in a statement.
The WPA said that the behaviour of the Ministry of Health and the hospitals authorities in response to the calls for investigations into the recent deaths, has been disgraceful. The party charged that the authorities have been more concerned with covering up rather that trying to get to the root causes of the problem.
According to the party, for too long the developments at the state run hospitals have conveyed to the public at large the impression that all is not well in those institutions.
“Unfortunately, it required several deaths for the Ministry of Health to come to the realization that something is seriously wrong with the system. What the Ministry is now trying to do is identify scapegoats to be blamed for the deaths instead of commissioning a comprehensive review of the operations of the health sector”, the statement said.
The WPA continued that the review must examine areas of weaknesses and failures, the length of time they have been known to exist and why, the sufficiency and competence of personnel and the ability of the administrators to function efficien-tly.”Until this kind of review is done anything that the ministry does will only be putting plasters on sores and more lives will be lost as a result of a non friendly patient care system”, the statement added.
Further, the party called on the President “to demonstrate his concern for the deterioration in the health system” by demanding the resignations of Leslie Ramsammy and Bheri Ramsaran or “to dismiss them forthwith”.
